A Year in Perspective

Its hard to believe its been another year since this project began, but through that time we have shown all sorts of interesting and cool things. In light of that we wanted to go back and look at some of the things we highlighted, going all the way back to the beginning of last year, as well as have a brief word from the leaders of those posts.

2D Team:

Battle Over Saddles
Watch as our 2D lead designs and draws the concepts for our battlesaddles.

The Alley of Artists
Many cool concepts by our many 2D artists.

Pew Pew Pew
Check out our first gun and read up as we explain how we designed it.

Alley of Artists II: The Sequel
See some of the many posters that will be found in our game.

Two-Dimensional Pipeline
Learn the process our team goes through going from idea to finished concept.

Alley of Artists III: The Revenge of the Cutie Marks
Check out some of our cutie mark designs and how they blend the 2D show style and our 3D style.

Over the course of the year 2D continues to churn out a variety of concepts from weapons, to everyday objects to household brands of Equestria. You’ve seen a selection of what we made in previous posts but we have plenty more to show still, and much more to work on over the course of time.

3D Team:

The Lane of Modelers
Check out some of the weapons and clutter seen in the early parts of the game.

Flow of Animations
Check out the first glimpse of some of our animations in-game, made by our 3D team.

Bloatsprite Speed Modeling
Watch as our 3D lead and one of our 3D members turns a simple 2D concept into a fully animated enemy.

While the 3D has had plenty of ups and downs during the last year, we’ve still managed to bring the ponies (somewhat) alive, make some basic weapons and plenty of generic clutter usable in pretty much everywhere in the game. We have given you a little taste before in a few posts, but there has been some rather big developments recently, which means that there will be some treats coming up soon.

Design Team:

Mighty Telekinesis
See the first glimpse of what magic will look like in our game.

User’s Interface
Join the design team lead as he explains how our user interface and HUD works.

Statistical Analysis
Read up on the many stats that you will be able to modify in-game and how they will effect your character.

It’s Magic...
Read up on some of our plans on magic, how it will work, and how some of the spells will work.

Since the beginning the design team has been putting most of their focus on writing up the design document for the game, a quite sizable task for such a large game, but through many long nights the 130+ page document is done. For now we plan on shifting our focus onto map design as well as working with script team to make awesome quests. While we don’t want to reveal everything, be sure to keep an eye out on the blog for more posts detailing what we have planned.

Music Team:

The Wasteland Wailers Reporting on Music
Check out the first release of our background music.

Our Musical Remedy
Listen to two of our finished radio songs.

In-game Adaptive Music
An in-depth look at our adaptive music system, how it works, and how it is driven by gameplay.

We wrote and released a lot of music in 2014: 4 original radio songs and almost 30 minutes of other tracks, including our game's theme music. We are happy that the genre of our soundtrack is now established and we're equally happy to have a solution of adaptive background music at our disposal. We are proud that most of our music got featured on Equestria Daily, and can't wait to be making more!

Here’s a little teaser of new original radio songs being very close to completion:

Programming Team:

The Science of Speaking
Take an in-depth look into the development process and physical mechanics behind our game’s lip-syncing implementation

Well, while we haven't had that many blog posts, the past year has certainly been hard work for the programming team! In a very short time we’ve had to switch from a relatively leisurely pace, building and experimenting with different systems, to implementing features quickly and fully, ensuring that they pass the rigorous standards of our ever-vigilant QA department.

We have some pretty exciting things to show you all in the coming months. These include, but are not limited to, a new rendering engine, interactive AI, and combat.

Script Writing Team:

Tales from the Script 43: Branches of the Conversation Tree
Take a in-depth look at how we write the many dialogue trees for the game.

Last year, the script team had the esteemed pleasure to watch the army of talented artists, programmers and voice actors bring our little conversation trees to life. Check out the first demonstration of that here!

This year we're looking forward to having livelier, more dynamic conversations, making sure the quests are dynamic and fun, with a narrative punch. This time next year, script and design hope to be able to show off some tight, fast and overall, fun quests.

It’s a pleasure working with such talent, and we hope to find new and exciting ways to expand and improve our craft. hee-haw and happy new year!

As you can see, the team has released many interesting posts from our many team. Please be sure to also check out our panel at Crystal Fair and Brony Expo, as well as check out our first gameplay demo.

As a reminder to everyone, our PipBuck Art Contest is still ongoing! Even if you aren't the most artistic person around, we still appreciate all of your ideas and effort, so don't be afraid to give it a shot! Just remember to read the rules before submitting, and you will be fine!